How fast do the chats go on the channels of popular streamers and on the broadcast of a top esports tournament? Streams Charts dives into stats of xQc and IEM Cologne 2022, top CS:GO tournament, to look for similarities and differences. It turned out that esports viewers are less chatty, and their activity is often evoked by specific triggers.
We reviewed three matches from the group stage of IEM Cologne 2022, a large CS:GO tournament that just finished in Germany. All three matches were played on the same day, July 10, and the broadcast lasted more than 11.5 hours in total. During this time, viewers left 79.2K messages in the broadcast chat (an average of 113.2 messages per minute).
Chat activity at IEM Cologne 2022 broadcast
The graph shows spikes in user activity when the number of messages in the chat increased by 5-6 times relative to the average. At the same time, the character count in messages remained pretty much unchanged — as viewers rarely wrote long messages, keeping their chat reaction to what they saw pretty short.
Most often, activity spikes occurred during the final rounds of maps. Important game moments also served as a trigger for the activity of the audience. These included highlights with outstanding game performance as well as some funny fail moments.
The chart can also be used to highlight the periods of decline in user activity. Chat tends to slow down during the switching of sides, as well as immediately after the final round. During these periods, viewers write fewer messages, but the messages themselves tend to be longer. In general, all the ups and downs of the chat activity of a CS:GO esports broadcast work the same way for any matches. The chart includes series involving teams from Russia, North America, Europe, and Brazil. In all cases, the viewer behavior patterns were identical.
We analyzed chat activity among top streamers using xQc as an example. He is one of the most popular content creators on Twitch with nearly 11M subscribers and 47K Average Viewers during broadcasts.
Chat analysis on xQc stream
The xQc broadcast selected for analysis also took place on July 10, like the abovementioned matches of IEM Cologne 2022. The Canadian streamed for 20.5 hours and his viewers left 891K messages in the chat (an average of 719 messages per minute) during this time.
Unlike the esports broadcast, user activity in the xQc chat did not follow any pattern. Usually, the behavior of the streamer or his reaction to what was happening (or witnessed) served as the trigger for the viewers. While the viewers in the chat usually reacted to whatever they witnessed themselves during a CS:GO match, the viewers on the xQc stream more often reacted precisely to the streamer’s reaction. For example, when a Canadian laughed at some video or discussed his colleagues. At such moments, the activity of the audience could increase by 2-2.5 times.
The above broadcasts have both common features and significant differences. Firstly, both broadcasts had almost the same number of Average Viewers: 68.4K and 63.8K viewers, respectively, as well as similar Peak Viewers indicators: 113K and 102K. There is a difference, but it is not so significant as the difference in the chat activity.
There were five times more active chatters on the xQc stream — 66.4K versus 18.2K on the official ESL broadcast. At the same time, fans of the Canadian sent 10 times more messages than viewers of the CS:GO tournament. The reason for this activity is that xQc constantly encouraged his viewers to chat, while the esports viewers reacted only to what was happening during the matches. Competitive games may not contain any triggers for the audience at all: for example, if the opponents of unequal strength face each other or if the match is simply boring (without any highlights or failures). In this case, the viewers will have no reason to be active in the chat and will have nothing to motivate them to send messages. The streamer, on the other hand, constantly communicates with his audience and reads the reaction of users in the chat. That is, in the case of an esports match, one-way communication works: users write in chat, but the players do not read these messages and cannot answer them. The streamer not only reads the comments but also answers them live.
Analyzing chat behavior can provide a lot of useful information because the viewers of esports broadcasts display different behavior from the viewers of top streamers. At the same time, advertisers often use both kinds of channels to promote brands or products — for example, publishing certain integrations through a pre-configured chatbot. When the time of publishing an advertising post is chosen badly, the post may drown in the rapid stream of other messages. As for the benefits for pro streamers, they can analyze their broadcasts and identify the triggers that their audience most actively responds to.
Streams Charts team will continue to explore the topic of chat speed in future articles.
